Why Aspen is still the hottest spot for the ski world's glitterati

Within the smartest society circles of interwar America, Elizabeth Paepcke was universally known as ‘Pussy’. And it was Pussy who saw it first.

On a weekend break to the Rockies in 1939, the socialite drove an old mining truck full of house guests to the top of little-known Aspen mountain, skis thrown hopefully in the back. When they reached the top and gazed down into the valley – over a rickety ghost town that was once a booming silver mining community – Pussy couldn’t contain her enthusiasm: ‘If ever a place looked like Sleeping Beauty awaiting Prince Charming’s kiss,’ she said, ‘this is it.’

Advertisement

It took Pussy six years to persuade her Prince Charming to pucker up. But in the end, pucker up he did. Her husband, the multi-millionaire industrialist Walter Paepcke, agreed to invest in Aspen – and he had a plan. His idea was to create an ‘Athens of the West’ nestled in the Colorado peaks. In his words, it would be a place ‘for man’s complete life… where he can profit by healthy physical recreation, with facilities at hand for his enjoyment of art, music and education.’ Tellingly, he added a caveat: ‘No riff-raff’.

He called it the ‘Aspen Idea’, and today the Aspen Idea remains very much alive and well in what has become the most glamorous ski resort on the planet. That failed Victorian mining town is now an Eden for the elite, attracting the rich, the famous and the beautiful in swarms. An estimated 10 private jets land at Aspen’s exclusive airport every hour during high season, while the average home now costs $2.75 million – and there are more master sommeliers per head here than anywhere else in the world.

Tatler Fashion Director Sophie Pera's guide to Paris for couture

The richest of the rich adore Aspen. A recent study by Forbes found that more than 50 of the world’s billionaires had homes or strong links to the town – an extraordinary number when you consider its permanent population is just 6,800. Roman Abramovich has a family home here, as does Jeff Bezos, Michael Dell and Stan Kroenke, the owner of Arsenal football club. And the Lauder family is spread across town like a perfectly gossamered cobweb.

Celebrities can’t get enough of the ‘Hampton of the Hills’ either. William H Macy, Kevin Costner, Dakota Johnson and Kate Hudson have homes here, while battalions of their fellow famous faces fly in for breaks throughout the year, hiring splendid mansions on Red Mountain, or staying in luxury hotels like the five-star favourite,The Little Nell. Rihanna is a frequent visitor – her favourite Aspen rental property, The Ski Home, has an indoor bowling alley and a shooting range. Leonardo DiCaprio spent Christmas here last year, hiring out the exclusive Japanese restaurant Matsuhisa for a riotous private New Year’s party. Mariah Carey is renowned for wearing stilettos in the snow during her Aspen sojourns, while other recent visitors include Cara Delevingne, Ryan Gosling, Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively, Tom Ford, Katy Perry, Will Ferrell and the Hadid sisters.

Advertisement

Snow on the ground or not, A-listers usually follow a well-trodden path: drinks at The Little Nell’s Element 47 bar or at the discreet Caribou Club(modelled after Annabel’s in London), then dinner at the French restaurant Cache Cache, sushi at Matsuhisa or sharing plates at the town’s top-end newcomer 7908 – named as a nod to Aspen’s lofty elevation (the town sits at twice the height of Ben Nevis). But if there’s one venue above all where you’re likely to spot a famous face during the winter months, it’s Cloud Nine – a chic ski-in, ski-out bar which has forged a reputation for excess.

‘Cloud Nine is crazy,’ says 24-year-old Alex Ferreira, an Olympic silver-medallist freetyle skier who’s a regular on the Aspen scene. ‘They have a cash gun in there that shoots dollar bills into the crowd, and champagne cannons loaded with $120 bottles of Veuve Clicquot. You see women wearing massive diamond rings, fur coats and very little else dancing on tables, drenched in champagne. People started wearing goggles and ponchos last year, there was so much Veuve being sprayed about.’

Of course, excess isn’t exactly a new thing in Aspen. In the Fifties and Sixties, the Kennedys partied hard here, closely followed by the likes of John Denver, George Hamilton and a young Jack Nicholson. And then the most outrageous of the lot, Hunter S Thompson, moved to town.

Read next

These are the hottest new hotel launches of the year

From the luxury tented camp in the Namibian desert to the latest Soho House outpost, these are the most exciting openings of the next 12 months...

ByRebecca Cope

Stories about Thompson are legion, and wild – despite which he audaciously ran for Sheriff in 1970, only narrowly losing. He invented ‘Shotgun Golf’ (one player tees off, and another immediately attempts to blast the golf ball from the sky), he threw outrageous parties and once rode a horse into the Hotel Jerome’s J-Bar to order a whiskey. Thompson loved the Hotel Jerome, which is still a favourite with the smart set (Lady Gaga and Jessica Alba love it). It was from there that he based his election campaign – and also where he almost drowned Bill Murray by duct-taping the actor to a sun lounger and tossing him into the hotel pool. Even that didn’t get him barred. That honour has only gone to one celebrity in the hotel’s 129-year history.

‘Let’s just say it was sex and drugs and rock and roll,’ says the hotel’s Head Bartender when I ask about the unnamed peroxide-blonde rock star’s crime. ‘All on the bar – and all at the same time.’

Infidelity, too, is nothing new on ‘Billionaire Mountain’. It was in Aspen that Donald Trump’s first marriage took its fatal downhill plunge in 1990, when he invited his then-mistress, Marla Maples, to the resort while he was spending Christmas there with his first wife and family. Stories still swirl about the ensuing showdown, but according to a large number of gobsmacked bystanders, Trump found the two women fighting outside a slopeside restaurant called Bonnie’s. The future US President hastily clipped his skis back on and made off down the hill.

Advertisement

The skiing is, of course, world-class, but it is just one of the resort’s many attractions, which also include an impressive opera house and a magnificent art museum designed by the award-winning Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, as well as the Aspen Institute, which hosts year-round lectures from speakers such as Barack Obama and the Dalai Lama. ‘People here still go crazy for the fresh powder, and the skiing is magnificent,’ says Peter McBride, the National Geographic photographer who was born and raised in Aspen. ‘But there’s so much else too, in terms of science, the arts and the music scene. There’s a creative component to Aspen that other ski towns simply do not have.’ The shopping is something else too: the legalisation of marijuana in Colorado four years ago has added another ingredient to that. There are now six legal cannabis dispensaries scattered between stores like Prada, Fendi and Dior in Aspen’s pretty Victorian heart.

‘The cannabis hasn’t really changed anything about the ethos of the town,’ shrugs McBride. ‘It was always a place full of highs. Everything goes back to that original Aspen Idea: creating a perfect place for mind, body and soul.’ Pussy Paepcke would be proud. The decrepit silver mining town she woke from its slumber is now pure gold.